USS Enterprise (NCC-1701-B)
|registry=NCC-1701-B |affiliation=Federation Starfleet |commander = |launched=2293 |status=Lost, presumed destroyed (2329) }} The USS ''Enterprise ''(NCC-1701-B) was an explorer in service as the flagship of the Federation Starfleet in the late 23rd and early 24th centuries. She was launched in 2293 under the command of Captain John Harriman. She was later commanded by William George, Demora Sulu and Thomas Johnson Jr. Over the course of the Enterprise-B's service, she was remembered as a key figure in exploring beyond the Gourami Sector, mapping over 142 star systems and making first contact with 17 different civilizations. Starfleet service Construction The Enterprise-B was built at the Antares Ship Yards; the decision to model the ship after the failed experiment USS Excelsior was highly controversial. However, Starfleet decided to use it for both economic and technical reasons, as the Excelsior class had shown that they could withstand the test of time; indeed, they would still be in service nearly a century after first being developed. Maiden voyage By 2293, construction work on the Enterprise had been completed, with only a few components needing to be installed such as a tractor beam and the loading of photon torpedoes. Despite this, the Enterprise-B was launched from a drydock orbiting Earth on a maiden voyage with three honored guests aboard in the form of Captains James T. Kirk and Montgomery Scott and Commander Pavel Chekov, as well as a large number of journalists. Although the maiden voyage was just meant to be a short trip out to Pluto and back again, the Enterprise received a distress call from two Federation transport ships who were bringing El-Aurian refugees back to Earth. Although not fully equipped, there were no other vessels in range, and Captain Harriman reluctantly gave the order to intercept them. Upon arrival, the Enterprise discovered that the transports had become trapped in an energy ribbon called the Nexus, and the starship herself became ensnared in when moving into transporter range. Unfortunately, the Enterprise was too late to help the crew of one transport, the , as it exploded and was only able to rescue 47 people out of 150 aboard the , before it too was destroyed. Captain Scott devised a way to free the ship using a resonance burst from the deflector dish to simulate an antimatter explosion, after a plan to use torpedoes was discarded, as there weren't any on board. Captain Kirk went to deflector control in order to make the necessary modifications as the Enterprise s secondary hull was struck by an energy tendril. The Enterprise escaped with minor casualties and a major hull breach along sections 20 through 28 on decks 13 through 15. Kirk was believed killed in the breach, and the mission became notorious due to his loss. An inquiry that followed cleared Harriman of any blame, although several former members of Kirk's crew held him to account. At some point by approximately 2294, Harriman would have a dedication plaque for Kirk installed in the area of the ship where he was at the time believed to be killed. After obtaining a Klingon bird-of-prey, the Montgomery Scott of the future traveled back in time from 2370 to 2293 to transport Kirk off the Enterprise-B at the moment where he was believed lost, but the action caused an alternate timeline to form, erasing the Federation from history. The timeline was restored when Kirk was returned to the Nexus. Service history In early 2294, during its first mission following the loss of Captain Kirk six months previously, the Enterprise-B was sent to deal with an outbreak of Terrellian plague in the Antares system, with Dr. Leonard McCoy onboard as chief medical advisor. En route, the starship confronted a renegade Klingon warship, the ''K't'inga''-class IKS Vengeance, whose captain intentionally released the plague to lure the Federation into violating Article 6 of the recent Khitomer Accords. Harriman defeated the enemy ship by transporter-swapping the Enterprise's entire complement of photon torpedoes for the Klingon crew — the battlecruiser was then destroyed, and the enemy crew captured. After the losses of its maiden voyage, the Enterprise was commanded by Captain William George for a deep space tour beyond the Gourami Sector that mapped 142 star systems, and made 17 first contacts. In the late 2290s Captain Harriman again assumed command of the Enterprise. At some point during or after 2293, an Enterprise-B landing party under the command of Ensign Demora Sulu marched into an ambush by the Brevant race on Beta Orvis III, with Sulu nearly paying for her mistake with her life. In 2303, Captain John Harriman and Lieutenant Commander Demora Sulu departed the Enterprise-B at Starbase 23 under the guise of personal leave, but secretly were headed toward the Romulan Star Empire on a covert mission for Starfleet Intelligence. The mission was to monitor for indications of advanced cloaking technology within Romulan space. Command of the starship was turned over to Captain Demián Rendón while Harriman and Sulu were gone. For eight weeks, the two became displaced some 173 hours into the future due to a temporal encounter with a star designated "Odyssey." After this displacement, Harriman and Sulu returned to Starbase 23, via the Foxtrot III monitoring station, and re-took command of the Enterprise. In 2307, the Enterprise underwent a rather extensive refit at Starbase 11, in an effort to bring it up to standards in respect to the new Romulan Ivarix class vessels. Several significant crew-transfers took place: among them the arrival of Boslic officer Xintal Linojj. At some point during this same year, both the Enterprise and Excelsior crews shared an overlapping shore leave at Starbase 11. Not long afterward, the Enterprise's refit was completed, and the starship returned to active status. Three years later, in 2310, as part of relief efforts stipulated in the Khitomer Accords, the Enterprise-B delivered supplies to four thousand indigents on the planet Qadyaq, in coordination with Commander Kang aboard the IKS K'tanco. However, upon arrival, Captain Harriman's crew discovers the planetary population held in thrall of a corrupt Klingon governor, who refuses to accept the relief supplies. The next day, both the Starfleet and Klingon vessels are shocked to discover the entire planet massacred by the governor — their throats slit — simply because they proved a risk to his crooked schemes. Filled with disgust, Harriman's ship departs Klingon space. Captain Harriman remained in command of Enterprise until 2311, when the ship played a key role during the Tomed Incident. Following the incident, Harriman stepped down, and command was given to his first officer, Demora Sulu. :The Starfleet Operations Manual stated that John Harriman's tenure as captain of the Enterprise lasted five years (2293 to 2298). the USS Enterprise Owners' Workshop Manual has apparently retconned the 2293–2298 tour to William George, with Harriman's second command running 2298–2311. In 2311, on her very first mission as captain of the Enterprise-B, Demora Sulu ran into unspecified trouble during a voyage to the Röntgen Wall. At some point not long after the Tomed Incident, the Enterprise-B crew under Sulu's command spent two years studying the Debrune ruins in the Barradas system. This mission presumably lasted until no later than 2315. Sulu's first command of Enterprise lasted until 2315, when she took a leave of absence to care for her terminally-ill paternal grandmother. During this leave, the Enterprise set off on a year-long exploration mission, which became wildly successful, and earned the new captain a promotion to Admiral. Sulu returned to the ship, and remained in command for several years thereafter. On a mission to a moon in Desidera's Loop aboard the Enterprise-B prior to 2319, Demora Sulu narrowly escaped death by both drowning and hypothermia. In 2318, the Enterprise-B under Captain Demora Sulu's command, participated in a first contact mission on Beta Velara IV, but without the participation of freshly-certified contact specialist Hawkins Young. Starting in either late 2318 or early 2319, the Enterprise was assigned to explore an unclaimed, unaligned region of space near the Tzenkethi Coalition, and was ordered to avoid all contact when possible with Tzenkethi ships. With no return-date specified, the starship conducted exploratory missions in the region, equipped with a dozen Class H shuttlecraft, two Gagarin class Warp shuttles and a half-dozen cargo-management units. Two months into the voyage, a massive construct was discovered in the Jalidor Lambda star system, whose exploration ultimately cost the Enterprise, among other things, the loss of a shuttlecraft, the Eriksson. Ten months passed by when the Enterprise discovered the planet Rejarris II located within this region, and, planetside, an interdimensional portal whose previous activation in 2308 resulted in the loss of the [[USS Excelsior (NCC-2000)|USS Excelsior]]. Attempting to rescue a stranded crewman on a planet located in a parallel universe on the other side of the portal, Captain Demora Sulu herself became trapped, along with two of Enterprise's shuttlecraft (the Amundsen and Pytheas). In an attempt to mount a rescue mission, involving the Enterprise and the USS Cassiopeia, Admiral Harriman used the Cassiopeia to destroy the Rejarris portal before an overwhelming Tzenkethi attack forces could claim it and cross over and board the Enterprise. Both Demora and Hikaru Sulu, as well as over five hundred stranded Excelsior crew, were rescued. The Enterprise-B ultimately returned to its home universe (albeit some three weeks prior to the original discovery of the portal) after eleven months of transition-time using the "Odyssey" star. The ship's last commander was Captain Thomas Johnson Jr., who took command in the early 2320s. The ship's assignment under Johnson was patrol of the Cardassian border. The ship was therefore able to render assistance to Bajoran refugees in 2328, when Cardassia annexed Bajor. The following year, the ship was lost in deep space shortly after the crew contracted some unknown infection. :The Star Trek: The Next Generation Officer's Manual has a different account of the 1701-B's demise. According to the RPG Sourcebook, on reference stardate 2/9208.12, the Enterprise-B engaged two hostile battleships, a Klingon L24 class and a Romulan Z1 class, in the Triangle sector, about five parsecs from the space of the Imperial Klingon States. Both vessels were defeated, but the Enterprise was also lost with critical battle damage. The upshot of the encounter was the end of IKS activity in the area, as the rebel government could not afford to lose any more capital ships after two large-scale vessels were claimed by the Enterprise-battle. Legacy In 2368, Berlingoff Rasmussen asked William T. Riker in his questionnaire for him what he thought was innovative about the Enterprise-B. A sculpture of the Enterprise-B later adorned the wall of the observation lounge on the [[USS Enterprise (NCC-1701-D)|USS Enterprise-D]] during the first few years of that vessel's service. A similar model hung in the conference room of the [[USS Enterprise (NCC-1701-E)|USS Enterprise-E]], along with the other incarnations of the ship in a glass and wood casing. Senior staff *commanding officer: **Captain John Harriman (2293-2311) **Captain Demora Sulu (2311-2315, 2316- ) **Captain Thomas Johnson Jr. (before 2332) **Captain William George (Unknown) **Captain Demián Rendón (2303) *first officer: **Commander Tracy Dane (2294-2301) **Commander Demora Sulu (2301-2311) **Commander Xintal Linojj (2311- ) Category:Federation starships Category:Excelsior class starships